Twenty-six laboratories and four training centres in Abuja and twenty-nine laboratories and six training centres in Lagos, pooled from the public and organized private sectors, are the beneficiaries of a training on the most recent Labs’ Quality Management Standard for Testing and Calibration Laboratories, as per, ISO/IEC 17025:2017. The new standard is an update of the 2005 version of ISO 17025 and is necessary for laboratories to meet updated laboratory accreditation requirements.

The trainings were organised within the purview of the European Union funded National Quality Infrastructure Project in Nigeria (NQIP), implemented by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Five-day sessions took place in Lagos between 30 April and 04 May, 2018, and commenced in Abuja on 07 May. The Abuja sessions will end on 11 May, 2018. The technical course is aimed at laboratory personnel such as quality managers who are responsible for the development and implementation of quality control procedures in the laboratory and includes exercises on the difference between both versions of ISO 17025, the fundamentals of auditing, and Train the Trainer (ToT). In addition, the aim is to develop national trainers for training centres on this new ISO/IEC 17025 standard for the sustainability of NQI project. Participants also engaged in group exercises and a written test.